this is already a bona fide obummer

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We should be watching like hawks. If they won't take him down, the game is so totally on.

Don't miss Greenwald's take....

well, yes, he would say that, now wouldn't he?

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ann's making a list

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It struck me as I was making my comment there that I ought to be making it here:

What made me stand up on my hind legs and start barking at my monitor was his gall to quote the Qur’an on truth, when he was clearly in the midst of doing what is called in the vernacular “dazzling ‘em with his bullshit”. Then, too, the bit about killing one being equal to killing all mankind was hard to bear from his lips, given the givens.

The one part of his speech I could not fault was the part about women’s equality. This is a weird position to find myself in because I’m pretty much of a jerk on feminism, hate whiners ruining my life and other women’s lives with their glorification of victimhood, hate male feminists making this worse, want to box heads when people speak as though women actually are somehow lesser while purporting to be speaking in favor of remedying that. If I didn’t know that there are so many women in Afghanistan who want education and freedom from the burqa, the power to determine their own lives, I might have found all kinds of fault with his assertions in that section of his speech, but I do know that. So that part trips me up.

I noted that he paid lipservice to every point the Iranians have laid down for conditions of engaging in diplomacy, without seeming to be doing that. The problem still is that he’s only said it. The problem still is that no matter what he says or how impeccably, every single time he gives a speech it is just another batch of mere words to make us waste our time analyzing in place of the action we ought to expect to be analyzing. And his action has, so far, been almost completely at variance with his words.

People go on about how much is on his plate, how much he is doing already, and it is true that he’s got his stamp now on an awful lot of stuff. Virtually indistinguishable from the last administration’s, too. I’m irked that I can’t rid myself of that last grain of hope that he’ll suddenly snap out of it, snap out of his lifelong capitulation to the politically astute moves while, clearly, staying dazzled by his own bullshit… ceding so reliably his own ideals and morals without even knowing that’s what he’s doing because he is SO good with the soaring oratory, even in his thoughts. This is called “hubris”.

People fail to recognize that hubris is not a consciously understood phenomenon in those who err with it. They are so convinced of the practical excuses for it that they completely obscure the brute fact of it from their own realization.

I wish to hell he’d just SHUT UP and start doing a good job. Islam would be won over THAT way. As long as he’s talking, NOBODY should waste their time listening.

I say this after wasting a few hours on this yesterday. I get the transcendental aspects after I’ve had a chance to sleep on it, let my REAL sense weigh in. I’m bugged that I have to be asleep to drop my own idiocy enough to get at the real, but, well, at least I do it at all….

my annotated transcript of obama cairo address

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Hamas letter to Obama delivered to U.S. Embassy in Cairo today.

too much nerve citing the qur'an on truth

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I wonder if I have the strength to find the transcript and point out the many hypocrisies contained in this address. The worst one may have been his shit about Palestinians bombing babies in their sleep, as though he's not bombing babies in their sleep, as though Israel hasn't bombed uncounted thousands of babies in their sleep, as though his bald faced lies about 9/11 are somehow more meritorious than Gazans fighting for their very lives. I tell you, I have amazing reserves of energy for a better world, but I don't know if I can tackle this without evaporating into a pink mist of utter existential exasperation.

I'll take my vitamins, see what I can do... but I just don't know.

AND WE DAMN WELL BETTER NAIL HIM ON THIS TORTURE PROBLEM....

He just told the entire Muslim world unequivocally we do not torture. Is that right? Now we have two highly credible sources who say that is NOT right. Does he merely intend to lie better than his predecessors? I guess you could call that "change".

i just don't know

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I sure wish I could get a better idea about what is really up with the various sorts calling themselves "Taliban" out there. Some who advocate we get the hell out of Afghanistan now, which would include the damn drone bombing in the Tribal Areas of Pakistan, insist this Taliban is not the Taliban from pre-2001, just warlords and tribal guys. Other sources are not nearly as charitable about their character. I'm torn between my instinct to let people govern themselves and my instinct to protect people from really cruel tyrannies... especially if it can be done without attacking anyone... from a purely defensive role.

I do know for 100% positive that I want Obama to stop the air attacks. One of the benefits of having him over Hillary was, we thought, getting someone who didn't have to prove how impervious to life forms she is once in office.

now here's a concept

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I'm not sure how I feel about someone's freedom of expression being sat on, but you will probably agree the outrageous Islam hate thing badly needs the proverbial bucket of water treatment.... Maybe they should sentence him to long meditative rests in the tulip beds, mellow him out.

no, no, definitely NOT an accident

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As I went to bed last night, they were reporting that Gazans were leaving their houses and amassing at schools in their fear and hoping to stay safe. In fact, we heard that they were warned out of their houses by Israeli pamphlets. No, no, everybody knew where the concentrations of Palestinians would be. This was no accident. Much easier to exterminate them when they're in groups.

And it wasn't just ONE school either.

no idea why this image made me cry

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I know Islam reveres Jesus, and I don't give a fig either way, but maybe it's just Pinter gone. Maybe sipping fat-free chicken broth instead of pigging out with everyone else. Maybe I've had this capitalist shit so far up past my wet eyeballs I just can't help it.

Whutever.

wisdom doesn't grow on trees

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Does anybody see the beauty in this? Have you nothing to say? Does it not concern you?

my biggest problem with islam

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Despite owning a copy of the most reliable translation of the Qur'an, I still can not hang with this obsession with the separation of the sexes. I need to read more of it, I guess, see if it is wrong or its adherents are. It just always boils down to a baseline belief that men cannot restrain themselves from rape, that if they are sexually aroused they are helpless to prevent themselves from doing something harmful about it. Allah cannot be pleased by this perfidious fixation on sex, since it has the predictable effect of making women afraid and men less responsible, which are both antithetical to real spiritual awakening... ergo: not something that would have been coming out of the mouth of a genuinely awakened prophet....

to be blunt about it

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yusuf islam on the life of the last prophet

a half hour